Convenience Big Store: The Post Office scandal: a sign of things to come

9 January, 2024

In the headlines

Fujitsu, which made the faulty Horizon software in the Post Office IT scandal, may have to pay out millions to victims. Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake has said the Japanese firm should be "held accountable, including making any payments". United Airlines has discovered bolts that need "additional tightening" on some of its Boeing 737 Max 9s, after a chunk of fuselage fell off an Alaska Airlines plane mid-flight on Friday. The vast majority of the 215 jets in operation worldwide have been grounded. South Korea is to ban the dog meat trade by 2027, ending a centuries-old practice. Dog meat stew, or boshintang, was once considered a delicacy, but now less than a fifth of South Koreans support the right to chow down on canines.

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Toby Jones and Julie Hesmondhalgh in Mr Bates vs the Post Office

The Post Office scandal: a sign of things to come

It should not have taken an ITV drama – Mr Bates vs the Post Office – to shame politicians into caring about the Horizon IT scandal, says The Independent. Due to a software glitch, more than 700 subpostmasters were falsely accused and convicted of having their fingers in the till. Many were jailed; others were bankrupted. "At least four died by suicide." For years the Post Office and Fujitsu, the Japanese firm responsible for the tech, did everything they could to "obfuscate and deny justice". Politicians and civil servants utterly failed to hold the organisation to account, not least Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey – as postal affairs minister when the issues came to light in 2010, he had a chance, "rarely for a Lib Dem", to actually do something. The government must ensure not only that victims "receive belated justice", but also that "those guilty of wrongdoing are held responsible".

What's scary, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times, is that Horizon is just one example of many. In recent years, all around the world, automated systems designed to spot fraud have ended up making baseless accusations. In Michigan, a computer falsely accused 34,000 people of welfare fraud between 2013 and 2015. More recently, in Australia, the so-called "Robodebt" scandal saw fines issued to 470,000 people on benefits, leading to at least three suicides. The problem in these cases wasn't just the "abrupt, unfair demand for life-ruining sums". It was that when the innocent victims tried to talk to an actual human to put things right, they found there wasn't one. And the more we automate, the fewer people there will be who understand what's going on. For now, there is still some guilty techie lurking behind the code. "Hound them. Blame them. Just as importantly, though, make sure they're always there."

Photography

These pictures may look like works of art, but they were actually taken by neuroscientists trying to find out more about the human nervous system, says The New York Times. They include a detailed image of a brain captured by a new MRI scanner; the giant blue web of a brain cell called an astrocyte; a "sea of tumour cells" that resembles a blossoming tree; and a miniature cerebral cortex grown by cancer researchers in the Netherlands. See more here.

Inside politics

David Cameron resigned from his "beloved" London members' club, White's, in 2008 because of its refusal to admit women, says Ethan Croft in the Evening Standard. But the Foreign Secretary now has a "new base in Clubland": Pratt's, often described as the "most exclusive" club in London, and where staff are "uniformly referred to as 'George'". The St James's establishment began admitting women last May, though this doesn't appear to have been what swayed the former PM – he joined back in 2020.

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On the way out

No more of this. Getty

After six years of deliberation, "it's official", says Le Monde: "loose glitter" will be banned from the EU. The measure is part of the European Zero Pollution action plan, which is taking aim at the shiny microplastics because they are, as anyone who's ever spilled a jar knows, "impossible" to clean up. Young Europeans are up in arms. "In my world," 32-year-old influencer Sam Dylan told the German tabloid Bild, "everything has to shine." Another German star denounced the EU for "taking away the last sparks of glamour".

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An estimated 70% of Gaza's housing has been damaged or destroyed. Mohamed Abed/AFP/Getty

What's Israel really up to in Gaza?

The conventional wisdom is that Israel "lacks a strategy" for Gaza beyond toppling Hamas, says Peter Beinart in The New York Times. But several top Israeli officials have made it clear that they have a plan, "or at least a preference", for what comes next: they want to force many Palestinians out of the territory. Ministers began talking about "population transfers" within days of the October 7 attack. Behind the scenes, Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly urged the US, Britain and France to push Egypt into accepting hundreds of thousands of Gazan refugees.

The Israeli PM will doubtless try to portray any such resettlement as "voluntary". But the truth is that his military action is rendering Gaza uninhabitable. About 85% of the Palestinian territory's population has been displaced, according to the UN, and an estimated 70% of its housing damaged or destroyed. Two in five residents are at risk of famine. This "cataclysm" could ease if the fighting ends soon, but Netanyahu has made it clear the military operation will continue for months, perhaps years. The longer it goes on, the more pressure Egypt will be under to alleviate the humanitarian crisis by letting Gazans cross the border. Palestinians have been here before, of course – many live in Gaza because their families were forced out of their original homes by the Israelis in 1948, in what they call the nakba. That's the "chilling historical backdrop" to all this. Gazans know that if they leave, Israel will probably never let them return.

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Gone viral

Swiper Games has come up with a brilliantly simple time-waster, says The Hustle. You click a button to turn on a switch, then try to turn it off again after exactly 5.5 seconds. It's harder than it looks – and strangely addictive. Give it a go here.

On the money

If you think live sport in the UK is expensive, spare a thought for American football fans, says Axios. The average ticket price for last night's college National Championship game between Michigan and Washington was an eye-watering $2,845. Even the cheapest seats were $1,302.

Snapshot

Snapshot answer

It's Bet365 chief Denise Coates, who earned "close to £300m" last year in pay and dividends, says the FT. The 56-year-old has taken home an estimated £1.1bn in salary alone from the family-owned business over the past four years, making her one of the world's best-paid executives. As you'd expect – or not, given the tax-dodging antics of some billionaires – Coates is also one of Britain's highest taxpayers: together with her father Peter and brother John, she handed over £460m to the Treasury last January.